You guys sound like the COAST troglodytes.  "It won't work here." "I don't understand it, ergo it's worthless." "Just because it works in London and Texas doesn't mean anything." "Forget facts, it just doesn't feel right so it's bad." "It will be massively difficult to implement." "Hurr durr go USA!"  Give me a break! 

 

If someone could point to anywhere this has been implemented, I would be satisfied. I just have not seen evidence this technology exists at this level of sophistication.

Texas, Los Angeles, and London have already been mentioned.

Cop cars can already read thousands of license plates per hour with a special camera placed on the fender.

An article about the LA cameras

 

The FasTrak transponders or the license-plate accounts electronically deduct money from a driver's credit line.

 

In addition, a rate hike takes effect Sunday. Cash tolls will increase 25 to 50 cents at most toll plazas and FasTrak tolls will increase 5% to 10%. Rates vary, depending on the time of day.

 

The changes, which will eliminate about 100 toll booth jobs, come about a year after the 73 toll road project restructured its roughly $2.1 billion in debt. An agreement with bondholders requires the agency to hike tolls whenever feasible.

 

As ridership continues to fall below projections, leaders are looking for long-term, money-saving measures.

 

Without toll booths, even casual users will have to register beforehand or else pay a fine for using the public road. Cameras will capture license plate numbers, and motorists who have set up pre-paid accounts registered to the photographed number will be billed.

 

FasTrak customers will still be able to use their transponders, according to the Transportation Corridor Agencies website.

 

Drivers who use the toll roads but haven't registered their license plate numbers will receive a violation unless they pay the toll online within 48 hours, said Lori Olin, a spokeswoman for the Transportation Corridor Agencies, which oversees the entire network of tollways.

 

The fine is currently $57.50, plus the toll amount.

 

Honestly, who is going to fully understand this policy who is out of town? There are going to be a lot of people travelling the region who don't know this policy. How will the people from out of town (especially elderly) know to go to the website and pay their toll within 48 hours? I realize there would be signs describing the policy, but really? Some people can't even learn to pay their utility bills online or check their bank account. Paying a $2 toll you have never encountered is not going to be easy for some people.

 

To be clear, I support a toll, but putting in something like this just doesn't seem right. I don't think that 71/75 gets enough daily traffic to justify this and some people are going to be completely lost in all of this and face some rather unfortunate consequences. I think a standard toll booth would be adequate.

EDIT: I did some basic research on the Texas tolls and found this website. Their method of monthly payments seems much more reasonable. It is also done by mail every month, not online with a 48 hour period before a $50 penalty is applied.

 

If the region really wanted to reduce congestion, they could set up a system where a single card pays for Metro, TANK, and tolls by connecting it to your bank account or credit card. This would encourage people to use public transportation since they had to sign up for it anyway. Simply giving people who pay tolls every day an extra nudge toward public transportation. I guess what I'm saying is that I wish TANK would operate the tolls on the BSB (similar to how MTA operates the toll bridges in NYC) to encourage public transportation usage by streamlining cards. Though in my ideal scenario, TANK and SORTA merge, but that is probably even less likely.

Ask and you shall receive:

 

Hi Jake,

 

The how hasn’t been answered, precisely, but “open road tolling” is one of the solutions that is being considered. We’re basically talking about gantries that stretch across the roadway and a little transponder on a driver’s dashboard or window  -- when you pass under the gantry, the signal emitted from the transponder automatically debits the toll from your pre-paid account. There are also video tolling systems that operate like red light cameras, and that’s another solution that is being looked at. Regardless, there won’t be toll booths where you have to stop, fish around for change, drop it in the basket, etc.

 

 

 

The recommended approach is expected in the final Value for Money report. That report is scheduled for delivery in March, although preliminary findings could be released in late January.

 

 

 

I’ll definitely make sure you have access to that report when it is published. And in the interim, I can find out who from our technical team can answer questions with you in a one-on-one email or phone interview – I think it would be Rick Herrington from HNTB, who is leading the tolling effort and has a lot of industry experience from his role in Texas.

Honestly, who is going to fully understand this policy who is out of town? There are going to be a lot of people travelling the region who don't know this policy. How will the people from out of town (especially elderly) know to go to the website and pay their toll within 48 hours? I realize there would be signs describing the policy, but really? Some people can't even learn to pay their utility bills online or check their bank account. Paying a $2 toll you have never encountered is not going to be easy for some people.

 

Is it even legal for government to force someone to get on the internet? My mother is 70 and cannot figure out Windows, the internet, mice and all that. She tried for years and spend hundreds of dollars on tutors and just can't -- even though she used a DOS computer terminal for years at various jobs.

Innnnnteresting. Okay, I at least see that it exists now. Still not sure how this will work for out of state (non-KY/OH) drivers.

 

I definitely imagine people getting confused by this. Especially old people. Oh, well. Here comes the learning curve!

You see a sign that says "Toll Bridge Ahead, $2.00 for Cars, Non EZ-Pass Users Get Billed by Mail at End of Month" or something to that effect.  They can pay by check through the mail or online or call in with a credit card.  If the cameras are good enough to read the plate numbers, then they're good enough to differentiate between states as well.  Besides, there's only so many of the same plate numbers out there at any one time, so it's not like it can't be narrowed down.  If the computer can't figure one out, then it's passed on for a human to read automatically.  Why is this so difficult? 

One reason is because you need cross-state agreements to pair license plates with names & addresses. Since this isn't a law enforcement issue, I don't think that's automatic.

>Why is this so difficult? 

 

This is reminding me of the shadow predictions for the apartments above Macy's, even though the sun never even hits the square from that spot currently. 

Whatever. You guys act like you have all the answers, but you don't. We just want to know how the details work. I guess your curiosity is satisfied. Mine is not.

I'm sleeping easy trusting that this is technically feasible, and what's more, we're going to be moving to way more tolled roads and bridges in the near future in part because tolling technology has eliminated the need for booths and their pesky union workers. 

Similar tolling technology will be used by KYTC and INDOT for the new I-65 and East Side Ohio River bridges in Louisville which will be under construction in the next year and will serve as funding and procurement models for the Brent Spence and related I-75 work.

I see this as the one saving grace of the bridgedoggle. It forces the introduction of tolls to the area. While nowhere near ideal, I think it is unlikely to happen otherwise for a long time.

 

Introducing user fees to highway infrastructure, thereby decreasing subsidies, will be a great step toward making other modes more competitive.

One question is will they toll all the other interstate bridges as well?  Maybe .25 cents one way.  There is 4 interstate bridges on the Ohio river around Cincinnati.

I haven't read any of this thread but I just want to throw my thoughts out. The problem isn't the bridge itself, it's the number of tractor trailers and the cut in the hill going southbound. All thru trucks should be banned on 71 and 75 and should be forced to take the 275 bypass around the City between the hours of  6 am and 10 pm.  BS should be brought back to it's original 3 lanes (instead of 4) on each deck.

It'll be interesting to see how much traffic starts using 275 to avoid the toll.  It's about 20 extra miles, so for many people that's another gallon of gas in addition to the time, so my guess is it won't motivate very many thru travelers.  Maybe it will motivate some west siders to take 275 or the ferry to the airport instead of the bridge. 

I haven't read any of this thread but I just want to throw my thoughts out. The problem isn't the bridge itself, it's the number of tractor trailers and the cut in the hill going southbound. All thru trucks should be banned on 71 and 75 and should be forced to take the 275 bypass around the City between the hours of  6 am and 10 pm.  BS should be brought back to it's original 3 lanes (instead of 4) on each deck.

 

This is something I'd prefer to see them look into as well. This evening I was on my way over to Cold Spring to get some stuff out of storage, and as I was heading south on 75 approaching downtown and the 71/471 exit, the right lanes approaching the Brent Spence Bridge were backed up. I couldn't help but notice that tractor-trailers seemed to form a huge percentage of the vehicles stuck in traffic approaching the bridge. Maybe not half, but certainly at least a third of the vehicles in the traffic jam were semi tractor-trailers, and I'm guessing the vast majority of them weren't serving destinations within the 275 beltway. If they were forced to detour around the city on 275, then the need for a new Brent Spence Bridge could be greatly mitigated. (Of course, this would involve the governments of Ohio and Kentucky having to stand up to the trucking industry, so it has a snowball's chance in hell of happening.)

The other way to go could be to close the bridge off to non-commercial traffic. Whenever anyone questions the necessity of a new bridge, 10 people chime in about how very important the bridge is to the national economy. This is one of the arguments against tolls: "the feds should pay for it, it is in the national economic interest!" So how about the existing bridge be open exclusively to these precious commercial vehicles? Congestion will be mitigated and the "need" for a new bridge disappears.

 

Then maybe the commuters can be honest about the cause of the congestion and just whom the bridge is really for. Then maybe they'll be willing to pay their share. (Yeah...lol)

No way the bridge should go back to 3 lanes. I remember the jams back in the 80's. Traffic would be much worse if you reduced lanes.

 

I have no idea why they just can't give all three lanes northbound at the bridge no entry point. And give The 12th street entrance and 4th street the 4th lane across the bridge. Put a ramp meter regulating the merge of 12th and 4th street at the bridge. Southbound would be much harder to fix without widening the overpasses and the US 50 merge for 3 lanes southbound on I-75 for the bridge. Have a ramp meter regulate US 50 traffic southbound onto I-75.         

The existing bridge is being restriped for three lanes after the new bridge opens.  This has been the plan for at least two years.  I 'm not sure why so many facts about this project remain unknown. 

 

>Then maybe the commuters

 

Almost all of the bridge's traffic is local.  I have repeatedly attempted to get information on what the official traffic count is for long-distance traffic on the bridge and haven't been able to get it.

 

Want proof that hardly any traffic on the bridge is long-distance?

 

Just drive down into Kentucky on either 75 or 71 south of the split.  Maybe 2/3 of the cars you're seeing heading toward Cincinnati are going to cross that bridge, and there just plain aren't many cars out there in the middle of nowhere.  I have repeatedly looked for the traffic counts on these roads out in the boondocks and haven't been able to find them, since adding them together would give a maximum number of long-distance travelers on the bridge.

 

 

 

 

I'm not entirely certain of this, I'll admit, but I have to believe that a highway or bridge financed by federal money can't discriminate among vehicle classes on a permanent basis.  If there's a safety issue, such as hazardous cargo rules or width restrictions or temporary bridge weight limits, then they obviously can.  But just to say you truckers can't drive here because we don't like congestion, well I would think that would be on legally shaky ground.  Truckers pay a heck of a lot in federal and state fuel taxes and would be up in arms over being prohibited from one highway and forced to use a 20-mile-longer "bypass" route.

 

I also think the current administrations in KY and OH would be loathe to legislate such a change, since both the trucking lobby groups and the many large companies (read: UPS in Louisville) that ship along 71/75 would probably protest loudly.

^ All of the bridges in NYC have tolls with rates charged by axle.  I think it's fair because a fully loaded 18-wheeler does a lot more wear and tear on a bridge than a small car.

 

I know this camera technology exists and is being used in several places, but I know it has margins of error.  However, I think the missed toll charges won't be anywhere near the costs of manning booths.

 

Also, here's a FAQ page for a similar system in Washington: http://www.wsdot.wa.gov/tolling/520/FAQ.htm

All of the big bridges in the NYC area that carry interstates predate the Federal Aid Highway Act of 1956.  This probably affects how they are legally able to charge tolls.

Yeah, I don't understand why this booth-less tolling is making people so skeptical. I have experienced this both on the WA-520 bridge in Seattle as well as a stretch of highway in Florida. In Seattle, there were EZ-Pass style transponders for residents, and if you don't have one, you get sent a bill in the mail. Also, the tolls charged by mail were double the rate charged to customers with transponders, so if you crossed the bridge often, it made a lot of sense to get a pass and pre-load money onto it.

How does UO charge for ads? Do organizations pay based on number of clicks they get?  :evil:

 

The server mostly gives me ads for pickup trucks on here.

That's pretty lame, much like their radio ads. 

Finally getting around to reading this article about tolling lanes on 75...

 

Enforcement typically is done through a combination of police patrol officers and video systems that read license plates. If the vehicle is not registered, the driver can receive a violation notice by mail. But catching out-of-state violators is a major issue facing the tolling industry, because no nationwide agreement exists between state departments of motor vehicles.

http://news.cincinnati.com/article/20121222/BIZ/312220070/Enquirer-exclusive-Ohio-pondering-fees-using-lanes-75-other-highways

 

Out of state plates are an issue for these technologies, however much you guys shrug it off.

 

If Kasich pushes all these tolling schemes through, my opinion of him will change greatly and for the better. Killing 3C was terrible, but introducing user fees for Ohio's roads is similarly important to the state's future. And it just may act as an impetus to push Average Johioan to support intercity rail.

^ That statement does not reference a technology issue, but rather a bureaucratic one.

It is a bureaucratic issue which arises as a result of technology being used.

 

If you use license plate cameras + mail as the primary means of collecting tolls from people without transponders, you run into this bureaucratic wall. The way I addressed the topic might make more sense if you read the past couple pages.

 

you need cross-state agreements to pair license plates with names & addresses.

How many people are crossing the bridge with plates other than Ohio and Kentucky?  I guarantee the figure is shockingly low, surely under 5%, and destroys much of the argument for the new bridge being of intergalactic importance. 

 

What about those pesky Canadians?

The intergalatic importance thing is not for cars from other states, it's for semi's.  There is a lot of freight that moves from MI to FL and everything in between along 75.  The Chamber doesn't care about people driving to work faster, they want freight services to move faster.

 

I totally support tolls on the bridge and parts of I75.  BUT my biggest frustration is that Butler County just got an extra lane and there were no tolls added, and I guarantee when they add more lanes to I71 in Warren they won't add tolls.  The tolls only get added to the urban developments making companies rethink their location.  If your choice is, office park in the City near seymour but many of your employees might have to pay a toll, or exurban office park where people can live in mason and drive toll free, some companies actually would choose Warren Co.  Look at Paycor for example, they left the City because they couldn't find a site that included secure surface parking for their employees.  They considered that more important than anything else because that is what their workforce was demanding.  They said no to Keystone because it was a garage, no to Oakley Station because they couldn't put gates up at the parking lots and had to share it with the movie theater, etc.  They chose the Norwood site because they could control their surface lot themselves.  If some other company says, our workforce says they don't want to be near an area that might require them to use tolls, the company might factor that in. 

 

All of that may be unlikely, but it shows my frustration of the fact that it looks like kasich is only going to apply tolls in urban areas and not suburban projects as well. 

 

EZ pass only lanes will ensure there are virtually no traffic backups for morning commuters.

Truck tolls are a negligible expense for a typical company.  I work for one that sends several trucks over the river every work day.  Say it's $50/day in tolls between the 6-8 crossings, that's still only $12,000/yr for a company that does $65 million in business.  So anyone who is making decisions to locate away from this bridge because of the tolls isn't very good at math.   

I was referring to an employer whose employees don't want to be near tolls, similar to how Paycor's employees demanded secured surface lot Parking so the company moved to Norwood.  Not trucks, just regular people.

I doubt that that business about secure parking was a deciding factor.  Since its beginnings, parking, and the imagined lack thereof, has been a dependable red herring. 

How could someone prefer outside parking over a garage? Man it's awesome when I get in my car in the summer and it's literally 200 degrees inside. Or when you get to destroy 15 minutes of your day scraping ice of the windows off your car. If the area is secured it shouldn't be more dangerous. With all the SUVs and other tall vehicles out there these days the bad guys have plenty of paces to hide in a surface lot a garage.

So after 20 years of construction there will be a net gain of zero lanes??

I doubt that that business about secure parking was a deciding factor.  Since its beginnings, parking, and the imagined lack thereof, has been a dependable red herring.

 

I was at a bar last week and there was a Paycor function. I struck up conversation with a lady who is an executive at Paycor, she said something to the effect of, " our staff is primarily middle aged suburban women and they were very persuasive that they must have secured surface lot parking in our new office. They had a committee that told management they do not want garages and perceive them as unsafe. We don't offer a lot of perks so we felt this one we should follow through on"

 

 

That would make sense in 1984 when everyone drove Camaros, Citations and Escorts but not with today's towering miniature semis that create hundreds of hiding places everywhere.

 

Life is not a horror movie.

I hear they are mentioning  another alternative plan to route I-71 through southern Boone, Kenton and Campbell county. From Richwood over to I-471. I don't see how it can be done. Too many steep hills.

I hear they are mentioning  another alternative plan to route I-71 through southern Boone, Kenton and Campbell county. From Richwood over to I-471. I don't see how it can be done. Too many steep hills.

 

uhg.  more sprawl.

I hear they are mentioning  another alternative plan to route I-71 through southern Boone, Kenton and Campbell county. From Richwood over to I-471. I don't see how it can be done. [bold] Too many steep hills. [/bold]

 

Steep hills are no match for lots of earthwork. Just look at I-275 through northern Kentucky. The question is not whether it can be done, but at what cost.

They were throwing that idea around back in the 90's.  It is presented as a bypass but is in fact a sprawl enabler.  There is hardly any traffic on I-71 in Kentucky that continues directly to Columbus. 

http://www.wcpo.com/dpp/news/region_northern_kentucky/covington/brent-spence-bridge-alternative-proposed

 

http://www.wcpo.com/dpp/news/local_news/study-brent-spence-corridor-project-will-create-more-than-24k-tri-state-jobs

There is not a new proposal.  There is a county commissioner who succeeded in creating a self-promotional news cycle. 

Anything that can be done to resuscitate the sprawl machine will be considered.

http://transportation.ky.gov/planning/planning%20studies%20and%20reports/interstatefinal%20report%20complete.pdf

Just have the government print a 3 billion dollar coin for the bridge. lol  I wonder. Are the bridges and roads we rebuilt in Iraq tolled? Is that bridge that was rebuilt in Minneapolis tolled as well? Is the Big Dig tolled? If not why?